Ihara Saikaku Quotes

#1. If we live by subhuman means we might as well never have had the good fortune to be born human.

Ihara Saikaku

#2. Though mothers and fathers give us life, it is money alone which preserves it.

Ihara Saikaku

#3. Ancient simplicity is gone ... the people of today are satisfied with nothing but finery.

Ihara Saikaku

#4. The first consideration for all, throughout life, is the earning of a living.

Ihara Saikaku

#5. If making money is a slow process, losing it is quickly done.

Ihara Saikaku

#6. To think twice in every matter and follow the lead of others is no way to make money.

Ihara Saikaku

#7. Men take their misfortunes to heart and keep them there.

Ihara Saikaku

#8. And why do so many people wilfully exhaust their strength in promiscuous living, when their wives are on hand from bridal night till old age - to be taken when required, like fish from a private pond.

Ihara Saikaku

#9. In life it is training rather than birth which counts.

Ihara Saikaku

#10. Take care! Kingdoms are destroyed by bandits, houses by rats, and widows by suitors.

Ihara Saikaku

#11. No longer can a young woman feel at ease; for she is ever concerned with the impression that she may be making on others.

Ihara Saikaku

#12. Like ice beneath the sun's rays - to such poverty did he fall ... his fortune melted to water.

Ihara Saikaku

#13. To make a fortune some assistance from fate is essential. Ability alone is insufficient.

Ihara Saikaku

#14. For each of the four hundred and four bodily ailments celebrated physicians have produced infallible remedies, but the malady which brings the greatest distress to mankind - to even the wisest and cleverest of us - is the plague of poverty.

Ihara Saikaku

#15. When you send a clerk on business to a distant province, a man of rigid morals is not your best choice.

Ihara Saikaku

#16. Harshness is for the good of a boy, soft-heartedness will ruin him.

Ihara Saikaku